The ingredient could be used in obesity surgery
The heat of chilli peppers may be the answer to weight loss, according to new research.
The ingredient capsaicin - which gives peppers their burning sensation - has been used to improve a slimming surgery technique.
Dr. Ali Tavakkoli of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston has been studying the ingredient. He applied tiny cloths soaked with a capsaicin soloution directly to the nerve around the stomach of lab rats. That destroyed nerve fibres that send signals from hte gut to the brain. It lead to weight loss.
"By selectively disrupting these signals that pass from the intestine to the brain, we have been able to change the way food is absorbed in the intestine," explains Dr. Tavakkoli.
If proven effective in humans, this could be a surgical alternative to bariatric surgery, which is performed on less than 1 percent of obese patients who qualify for it.
"There really is a group that this would be perfect for, and it's probably the super obese," said Tavakkoli.
Bariatric surgery is a major procedure, which can come with considerably greater risks for the morbidly obese. The capsaicin application is still surgery, but much less invasive.
Dr Tavakkoli said: 'High visceral fat volume is a marker of obesity and obesity-related diseases, such as diabetes. Preferentially lost visceral fat after vagal de-afferentation highlights the potential for this procedure.'
The researchers note that more work needs to be done on whether these surgeries can be used on humans, and whether capsaicin could be applied directly to human vagal fibres.